Please help I need a response ASAP please....I've looked everywhere...I need a critical analysis and a interpretation of the poem's stanzas of The Haunted Palace....I only get a copy of the poem when I've searched. Please help asap.....1-23-04

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2004

Answers

Mabbott's book "Complete Poems" does a great job. Poe's own story "The Fall of the House of Usher" explains and frames the poem which mirrors the theme of the story as well, perhaps preceding the story. The identification of Usher with the House and lands carries over in the poem. Solve it like a riddle. Each stanza describes a man's mental state and appearance through aging and decay. The palace is the head, the waving pennants the golden hair. Thoughs and words are described as guests. You can figure it out for yourself for the most part. The horror and doom of natural decline symbolically mirrored by the whole complex of environment(Space), body, family history(Time), mind and companions(narrator, sister) us a unified, inevitable implosion from which Usher fights hopelessly by means of art, music and literature. But the fall and the doom is within him and is him as well.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2004